Tony Blair apologises for Iraq war 'mistakes'

Date
    October 25, 2015
    The Age

The former British prime minister used a US television interview to express regret over the failure to plan properly for the aftermath of the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the false intelligence used to justify it.

"I apologise for the fact that the intelligence we received was wrong," he told CNN.   




"I also apologise for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime."   

Asked by host Fareed Zakaria if the Iraq War was "the principal cause" of the rise of Islamic State, he was reported by Britain's Mail on Sunday to have conceded: "I think there are elements of truth in that.

"Of course you can't say those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015."


Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon accused the ex-PM of starting to prepare the ground for expected criticisms when the long-delayed report of the Chilcot Inquiry is finally published.

"The Blair spin operation begins but the country still awaits the truth," the Scottish National Party leader posted on Twitter. "The delay to Chilcot report is a scandal."

No date has yet been given for the release of the final conclusions - more than six years after the inquiry was set up by then prime minister Gordon Brown with the assurance that it would take a year.


The process was severely delayed by a process known as "Maxwellisation", under which those who may face criticism - believed to include Mr Blair - are given the opportunity to respond before publication.

Relatives of soldiers killed in the conflict have threatened legal action if a date for release of the inquiry's conclusions is not fixed soon.

A spokeswoman for Mr Blair said: "Tony Blair has always apologised for the intelligence being wrong and for mistakes in planning. He has always also said, and says again here, that he does not however think it was wrong to remove Saddam."


Lord Blunkett - who was home secretary at the time of the decision to join the military action - said he had sought assurances in vain from Mr Blair over the planning for the aftermath.

"Tony was not able to say what was going to happen when combat operations were over. He just decided to trust [Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld," he told the Mail on Sunday - referring to the then US vice-president and defence secretary.   

If Sir John Chilcot did not quickly release an interim copy of his findings, he would "risk his entire exercise being entirely discredited", Lord Blunkett added.

ImSpartacus2 wrote on Oct 25^th, 2015 at 6:01pm:
And the Zionists that were behind the scenes.

F#ck Iraq, when is he going to apologise for Cherie.

‘International justice is farce if Blair doesn’t go on trial over Iraq war’

Former UK PM Tony Blair should be indicted by the International Criminal Court for leading Britain into an illegal war with Iraq, resulting in millions of deaths and the rise of Islamic State, says Neil Clark, a journalist and a broadcaster.

The former British Prime Minister admitted in an interview with CNN that there are “elements of truth” to the supposition that the US-led Iraq invasion led to the rise of Islamic State.

“I find it hard to apologize for removing Saddam. I think, even from today in 2015, it is better that he’s not there than that he is there,” Blair told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

RT: Could you shed some light as to why this is happening now? Is there something in the timing that has prompted Tony Blair to admit the failures of the 2003 campaign?

Neil Clark: I woke up this morning to the rather dramatic headline that Tony Blair had “apologized for the Iraq war.” I thought: what’s happening here? Of course, when I actually looked at the story more closely, he hasn’t done anything of the sort, he hasn’t apologized at all…He said “there were elements of truth” in the idea that the Iraqi invasion may have led to the rise of ISIS…In fact, without the Iraq war, we wouldn’t have the Islamic State today, would we? I think this is really more spin from this warmonger, it’s an attempt to justify the Iraq war rather than being an apology…He said that he finds it very hard to apologize for removing Saddam Hussein from power. Of course, a regime change is illegal under international law. I think the reason he is coming out with this now is the Chilcot report, which we are still waiting for... We had revelations last week, Colin Powell’s memo, which showed that Tony Blair committed Britain to support the Iraq war back in about 2002. And despite what had been said in public, that Saddam Hussein could have avoided war by renouncing his weapons of mass destruction, we knew that Blair had already committed Britain to that war. So, he has been caught lying and I think he is doing this now to try and spin his way out of it. Comments that he made in that interview, that Iraq could have been another Syria…That’s absolutely ludicrous because part of the reason why Syria is in such a state is because of radical Islamic terrorist groups like the Islamic State, which have been caused by the Iraq war.

RT: Blair also said that intelligence data on Saddam’s chemical program had proved wrong. How could they start an intervention based on unconfirmed data?

NC: The reason why they invaded Iraq was because Iraq didn’t have WMDs. If Blair and Bush genuinely thought Iraq had WMDs, they would not be invading it, they would be deterred. Don’t forget that people like Blair are telling us now that Britain must maintain Trident, we have to have weapons of mass destruction to deter an attack. And the very same people are telling us, want us to believe, that we invaded Iraq because Iraq had WMDs. We know quite clearly that Tony Blair and the warmongers lied to us about Iraq having WMDs, and now they are trying to blame the intelligence services. Intelligence services were under pressure to come up with ‘evidence’ that they knew the government wanted. Some of this evidence is absolutely ludicrous – taken from university students’ essays and things like this...

RT: What’s next now for Tony Blair? He has been branded a “war criminal” by some. Will this opinion strengthen now?

NC: Absolutely. The International Criminal Court, the ICC, I think has indicted 36 people so far – all of them are black Africans. They have been accused of being a racist body. Now there’s a chance for them to indict Tony Blair for war crimes. The case is absolutely crystal clear: he led Britain into an illegal war with a sovereign state on deceitful grounds... A million people have died...If Tony Blair isn’t put on trial for war crimes, then who else is going to be put on trial for war crimes? It really makes the whole system of international justice a farce... The ICC is indicting African leaders for crimes that are not on the same scale as Tony Blair’s crime. The Iraq war was the greatest crime of the 21st century.

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/319652-blair-iraq-war-crime/

Will Bush and Blair be Prosecuted for crimes charges
    Debate: Will Bush and Blair be prosecuted?

In this edition of The Debate, Press TV interviewed Jim Brann, with the Stop the War Coalition from London, and congressional defense policy advisor Frederick Peterson from New York about war crimes charges against George W. Bush and Tony Blair over Iraq invasion.

http://presstv.com/Video/2015/10/25/434959/Bush-Blair-war-crimes-charge-Iraq-inv...

ImSpartacus2 wrote on Oct 26^th, 2015 at 4:08pm:




Do you think that Fidel Castro should apologise for taking over Cuba at gunpoint? , or are you only interested in prosecuting the leaders that initiated war to further democracy?

The idiot left only supports the Pals because the Pals are a bunch of fascist blood thirsty murderers, this is something the idiot left can relate to, the idiot left supports fascism in Palestine because hey if they were there thats what they would be doing too.

ImSpartacus2 wrote on Oct 26^th, 2015 at 6:04pm:



Talk about useful idiots, spartacus could be their spiritual leader, the muslim may have contempt for the jew but they have an even bigger one for the western idiot left, what sort of culture go's into overdrive in order to extinct itself?,  the idiot western left that's who, nobody can respect lemming like behavior like that, especially not the muslim that has been pre programmed to exploit such weakness.

issuevoter wrote on Oct 28^th, 2015 at 6:45am:


John Howard said the same thing ?